1. Technology Field
The present invention relates generally to virtual representation technology. As used herein, “internet” shall be used as a generic term for any collection of distributed, interconnected networks (ARPANET, DARPANET, World Wide Web (hereinafter web), or the like) that are linked together by a set of industry standard protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, and the like) to form a global or sub-global distributed network; an “intranet” is a proprietary network having similar properties to which the present invention may be adapted.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently an internet user's personal content is some combination of digital data files—that may include information data, pictures, video clips, presentations, electronic books, digital music, and the like—and the user's generally random and unorganized interactions therewith. A user's personal content grows at a rapid rate. Organization of and access to personal content becomes a significant issue.
In the state-of-the-art, the user's experience of internet-relational, mobile computing consists largely of being able, as examples, to listen to an MP3 song, read e-mail, or browse the web from a laptop computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), mobile telephone, or the like, referred to hereinafter generically as “mobile devices.” Even the most mundane of these activities are frequently hampered by the need for making configuration settings, waiting for connections, losing wireless connection signals and starting over, and the like, even when the action desired by the user is similar to a previous mobile computing experience.
An advancement to the state-of-the-art is to have task-focused, sensor-enhanced, mobile devices that have tools for capturing some type of data or content from the physical world. For example, a PDA might be enhanced by addition of data capture tools, e.g., sensors such as an optical tag compatible subsystem—generally known as a barcode reader—an infrared receiver, a contact tag, a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag reader, a position locator—such as Global Positioning System (GPS)—a camera, a handheld scanner, environmental condition detectors, a microphone and recording memory, or the like. Identifiers compatible with these capture tools, e.g., bar codes, beacons—namely, a transmitter of an identifier signal, e.g. Uniform Resource Locator (URL), over a short range via an infrared, wireless, or the like mechanism—and the like, are provided to be extracted from, attached to, or be near, associated physical objects. The capture tool obtains the identifier. The device resolves the identifier into a virtual resource or action related to the associated physical object. The result of resolution of an identifier may be information, e.g., a web page, or a service provided to the device user, or an action in the local physical environment. Provided with an appropriate infrastructure, mobile device users now automatically can find specific single web links by sensing something in the physical world; i.e., these enhanced mobile computing solutions use an iconic physical interface sensed by a sensor-enhanced mobile device and mapped by network software to a name for a contextual action associated with the current need. Examples are described by J. Barton and T. Kindberg in HPL-2001-18 Technical Report, titled “The Challenges and Opportunities of Integrating the Physical World and Network Systems,” Jan. 24, 2001, discussing physical entities, virtual entities, and network-based linage mechanisms between them, whereby users engage simultaneously in mobile computing and their familiar physical world. The ability to resolve identifiers should be ubiquitous in that users should be able to pick up identifiers and, as long as they are connected to a wireless network, have the identifiers resolved. Examples of identifier resolution are described by T. Kindberg in HPL-2001-95 Technical Report, titled “Ubiquitous and Contextual Identifier Resolution for the Real-world Wide Web,” Apr. 18, 2001, revised as HPL-2001-95R1 Technical Report, titled “Implementing Physical Hyperlinks Using Ubiquitous Identifier Resolution,” Mar. 26, 2002, focusing on choices for identifier encoding and associated contextual parameters. These reports are available at the Hewlett-Packard Company web site. Such smart space systems further complicate the issue of use and query of personal content in relation to current physical context. Web servers may now be embedded in appliances in order to render them compliant with smart space environments; for example, see U.S. Pat. No. 6,139,177 (assigned to the common assignee herein).
In the current computer-centric paradigm, a user can only use resources and services installed and available on his computer to process his files. For instance, to print a file, a driver code needs to be installed beforehand on the computer for each printer that is to be a peripheral resource of the computer.